Put away your purse & become debt-averse

Whatlifeis

Weed-Fit eh? I sense a market opportunity…

Looking forward to joining you on the YouTube workouts 😁

foxgloves

@Sun_Addict - Yes, I quite enjoyed it.....or more accurately, I didn't NOT enjoy it, so I may do a choice of his videos on rainy days. I am hoping to get back to regular cycle riding soon & step up my walks around the village again. We are near the river so there are some nice routes for little circular walks from my front door. 

@Whatlifeis - Lol, I actually do intend to do some 'Weed-Fit' every day next week. I've been at the back of one of the big borders this morning, pulling out goosegrass & bryony & it does involve bending stretching, lifting, forking, carrying & a decent amount of trotting about. If I really stepped up the speed too, I think I'd soon be puffing & burning a few cals. Intend to try it next week, anyway. Will report back!
F

foxgloves

Hello Sunbeams,
Well, Ash is out in the garden somewhere enjoying the sun, Soot is destroying a doormat & I'm sitting at our dining table in the conservatory with a large coffee, having unexpectedly found myself with some leisure time. Was out in the garden early this morning & managed to plant out the rest of the bedding plants & perennials I grew from seed. The larkspur isn't ready yet as they can be such tardy unhelpful b*ggers for germinating but they are well underway now so I have potted them up into a shuttle tray & they will move into the borders when they are bigger. It will be quite nice to have something to add to the borders later when other flowers are starting to fade. I also planted my emergency cucumber into its final grow bag & started the hardening-off process for courgettes, squash & beans. 
Gas engineers due for boiler & living room stove service between 2 & 5pm but arrived at 12.30 instead & as there were 2 of them, they took an appliance each & were finished very quickly. So as waiting around for up to 3 hours waiting for a knock at the door was no longer something I needed to do, I felt I'd gained a bit of time. Mr F texted me to say he thinks the chickpea curry (the slow cooker one I've been making with chard rather than buying spinach) might be 'his new favourite' - he took a portion in for his packed lunch today. So I thought I may as well go & pick some more & get another batch made. It's a recipe from the 'I <heart> my slow cooker' book, takes 4 hours to cook, then the shredded greens go in for another half an hour or so. It freezes well & we usually have all the ingredients in stock. Some of the chard plants have bolted now, although I'm hoping I can still get a modest pick from the rest of them to make another batch of pesto as we were both surprised how nice it actually was. 
Other money saving activity - Did next week's meal plans. Was hoping to base all our meals around stuff we already have in stock, then Mr F played right into my hands. He has some very difficult staff shortages to manage atm & has to work on Saturday afternoon to help cover a staffing crisis. He suggested we could maybe order a take-away pizza that night. I've said that's fine, as long as it comes from our grocery budget. It's the final week of this month's budget cycle so if there is enough money left after Saturday morning's supermarket trawl, then it can certainly be pizza money. Then I pinged him the meal plan, with which he concurred instantly! This means I was indeed able to use food from our own stores:
Sat - Takeaway pizza (the prize for under spending......)
Sun - Lemon pepper chicken, home made potato salad & a mixed salad (one of Mr F's BBQ over-buys which we froze)
Mon - Home made fish cake (HFW's Leftovers book made with trimmings & small pieces from our most recent fish box) with savoury giant couscous & a green salad (all salad leaves will be coming from our garden for a while now)
Tues - Jacket potato night - I will probably have cottage cheese & coleslaw, Mr F will almost certainly be constructing an Epic Man Stew (for MEN!)
Weds - Spaghetti bolognese (from freezer - slow cooker batch cook from a few weeks ago)
Thurs - Salmon, new potatoes & salad or peas, depending on what I feel like on the night.
Fri - Turkey chilli & home made jacket wedges - last 2 portions of the chilli I made & froze from our Christmas turkey - a recipe from the WI Christmas recipe book which has become an annual seasonal 'make' for us. It makes 7 or 8 portions so is a good batch cook.
So although we will need to buy the staples like spread, butter, yoghurt, eggs, etc, we won't need anything for dinners, main proteins, etc. And it will concentrate Mr F's mind wonderfully if his 'compensation for Saturday working' pizza is dependent on an under-budget shop!
Anyway, I do yakk on, don't I? I'm off to the pondy bench with my book now. Oh.....a nice little email earlier to say that one of the more decent paying surveys I did yesterday has also resulted in an additional £5 bonus - no gift horses knowingly looked in the mouth here!
Cheers,
F xx

Sun_Addict

What on earth does Mr F put in these epic man stews he makes 😆

foxgloves

Oh @Sun_Addict, that question made me laugh....I nearly inhaled a crisp! 
The answer is a veritable cornocopia of meat & veg based leftovers.
Not a concoction which is eaten by me!
F

Suffolk_lass

Hello @foxgloves I thought I would take a look at your diary after you kindly posted encouragement on mine. I have not read back but I wanted to just say that when our chard bolted, DH cut it down to nothing and it has come again - so have not had to plant more this year. I have some rainbow chard seeds from two years ago and will try some to see if they germinate as it is a great substitute for spinach, as you say (I find spinach bolts in 2 minutes here, because I don't water it enough for where I grow it).

foxgloves

Oh thanks, that's a good idea, @Suffolk_lass. I might well try doing that next year. I grow the 'White silver' chard variety. I've grown spinach & perpetual spinach in the past. Perpetual spinach seems to do better in our garden but unless I am pretty much picking it every day & giving it super-special extra watering, you are quite right, it seems to bolt during the 15 mins you turn your back on it & pop in for a cup of coffee! I've included nuts & parmesan on our shopping list for tomorrow, as there are still sufficient good leaves on last year's chard to get more pesto made. I didn't make much last time as I wasn't sure what it would taste like, but actually it is lovely & also freezes well. As it will be a long time until our basil is lush enough to cut for pesto-making, I think this will be a good use of the last of the chard. 
F

Suffolk_lass

Please share the proportions of your pesto recipe. I have all ingredients here... (hoarder, moi?)

foxgloves

Hello Friday Frugalistas,
Rubbish night's sleep - awoke at 4am & couldn't get back to sleep because of dentist anxiety. Naturally my fitness band informed me I'd had a straight 7.5 hours of impressive slumber, like the consummate sleep fibber it is! Dentist was fine. No work needed today, so just the price of 2 check-ups. I also learned that our county is 2000 dentists short of the number required - that is a shocking statistic & I felt very grateful to be registered with an NHS dental practice even though it's in the city & much more of a faff to visit than a practice in our nearest town a mile & a half away.
Stopped for coffee at favourite big garden centre on our way back. Intended to have a cheese scone each & to share a cake for our lunch......until we spotted that cakes were £4.25 each! Opted for 1 cheese scone & 1 cherry scone between us, plus a coffee each, as the scones were enormous & worked out much cheaper. 
Bought a new long-handled dustpan & brush. My old one broke recently & my attempt to mend it resulted in another lump of it helpfully shearing off. I'd had it over 20 years & used it most days for sweeping up spills or just brushing up the kitchen floor without the faff or electricity-use of getting the vacuum out. I'd sourced one online but the one I bought from aforementioned posh garden centre was double the cost. I still bought it, as it is wood & metal rather than plastic & is a good height for a personage of 5'3 & a 1/4". I will make some of the extra cost back by shopping another mundane household item I require from home. Anyway (wish I could have read this while I had insomnia in the early hours as I reckon it'd have sent me to sleep by now!), Now here's a thing. Several years ago, when we were trying to reduce our monthly energy payments (which we successfully did, as well as receiving a rebate), I did a detailed energy audit of our home, & one of the 'actions' was that I wouldn't default to vacuuming every time our hard floors looked ucky if I could make a decent quick-win difference for free with my trusty long-handled dustpan & brush (& no, I DONT fly into town on it if anyone was thinking of making a quip along these lines!). Today, I popped into the utility to fetch cleaning spray & noticed the smart monitor said 79p for today's electricity use. After Mr F had vacuumed the entire house, I checked it again & it had gone up to £1.06. So that would point to an approximate cost of 27p for a basic vacuuming of the house. While that's money well-spent imo, I wouldn't want to be doing 'mini-vacuums' throughout the week when often I can be just as speedy with a brush. I think that would add up over a year. My thinking atm re gas & electricity bills is that there is no measure too small to add into the energy-saving mix.
Things I didn't buy at the lovely garden centre today: A bright pink leather purse with cats on it, glass tumblers with a floral bee pattern, a nice green tunic top which is really quite like 3 tunic tops I already own, bath melts, a grapefruit scented candle.......not forgetting the £4.25 slice of cake! There were also colour-it-in yourself pencil cases with dinosaurs on. I may not be the intended demographic for this item, but it did look like fun  - if my nephews were still little, I'd have bought 3 of these for sure!
Ah well, time for greenhouse inspection.
F xx

kayannie

foxgloves said:

Hello Friday Frugalistas,
Rubbish night's sleep - awoke at 4am & couldn't get back to sleep because of dentist anxiety. Naturally my fitness band informed me I'd had a straight 7.5 hours of impressive slumber, like the consummate sleep fibber it is! Dentist was fine. No work needed today, so just the price of 2 check-ups. I also learned that our county is 2000 dentists short of the number required - that is a shocking statistic & I felt very grateful to be registered with an NHS dental practice even though it's in the city & much more of a faff to visit than a practice in our nearest town a mile & a half away.
Stopped for coffee at favourite big garden centre on our way back. Intended to have a cheese scone each & to share a cake for our lunch......until we spotted that cakes were £4.25 each! Opted for 1 cheese scone & 1 cherry scone between us, plus a coffee each, as the scones were enormous & worked out much cheaper. 
Bought a new long-handled dustpan & brush. My old one broke recently & my attempt to mend it resulted in another lump of it helpfully shearing off. I'd had it over 20 years & used it most days for sweeping up spills or just brushing up the kitchen floor without the faff or electricity-use of getting the vacuum out. I'd sourced one online but the one I bought from aforementioned posh garden centre was double the cost. I still bought it, as it is wood & metal rather than plastic & is a good height for a personage of 5'3 & a 1/4". I will make some of the extra cost back by shopping another mundane household item I require from home. Anyway (wish I could have read this while I had insomnia in the early hours as I reckon it'd have sent me to sleep by now!), Now here's a thing. Several years ago, when we were trying to reduce our monthly energy payments (which we successfully did, as well as receiving a rebate), I did a detailed energy audit of our home, & one of the 'actions' was that I wouldn't default to vacuuming every time our hard floors looked ucky if I could make a decent quick-win difference for free with my trusty long-handled dustpan & brush (& no, I DONT fly into town on it if anyone was thinking of making a quip along these lines!). Today, I popped into the utility to fetch cleaning spray & noticed the smart monitor said 79p for today's electricity use. After Mr F had vacuumed the entire house, I checked it again & it had gone up to £1.06. So that would point to an approximate cost of 27p for a basic vacuuming of the house. While that's money well-spent imo, I wouldn't want to be doing 'mini-vacuums' throughout the week when often I can be just as speedy with a brush. I think that would add up over a year. My thinking atm re gas & electricity bills is that there is no measure too small to add into the energy-saving mix.
Things I didn't buy at the lovely garden centre today: A bright pink leather purse with cats on it, glass tumblers with a floral bee pattern, a nice green tunic top which is really quite like 3 tunic tops I already own, bath melts, a grapefruit scented candle.......not forgetting the £4.25 slice of cake! There were also colour-it-in yourself pencil cases with dinosaurs on. I may not be the intended demographic for this item, but it did look like fun  - if my nephews were still little, I'd have bought 3 of these for sure!
Ah well, time for greenhouse inspection.
F xx

When we first had a smart meter, I noticed that the vacuum cleaner used a lot of electricity, so like you I reduced the amount of time I use it. That was a few years ago, but it's more necessary now than ever with the cost of electricity what it is today. I find it quicker to grab the dustpan & brush to clear up a few crumbs, rather than haul the cleaner out of the cupboard where it lives. KA